~★~♥~♥~★~ El Morno! ♥~★~★~♥ ~
July 23, 2014

★~ Today’s Quote:  “A hotdog at the ballgame beats roast beef at the Ritz.” ~  Humphrey Bogart

★~ National Hot Dog Day:

Click here if you need to review the proper way to eat a hot dog. This year, lets talk about how the hot dog was named.

Ben Zimmer, executive producer of the online magazine Visual Thesaurus, says there are a lot of myths about the name “hot dog.” One is about a New York Evening Journal cartoonist, Tad Dorgan.

“Around 1901, Tad Dorgan was at the Polo Grounds in Upper Manhattan; it’s where New York’s baseball Giants used to play. He was at the ball game [and] one of the concessionaires was selling red-hots, these frankfurter sandwiches, and he had the idea to make a cartoon with a dachshund in a roll, and so he drew this picture for this cartoon,” he tells Morning Edition’s Renee Montagne.

But, the story goes, Dorgan didn’t know how to spell “dachshund,” so he wrote “hot dog” instead.

“This has been a very sturdy myth, even though there is not a bit of truth to this story,” Zimmer says.

Recent research has revealed a different possibility. Yale Law librarian Fred Shapiro has found evidence of hot dogs in Paterson, N.J., as early as 1892. Zimmer says that story starts with a frankfurter vendor named Thomas Francis Xavier Morris — also known as “Hot Dog Morris.”

Morris was a black man who came to the United States from the Caribbean. “He had this remarkable life, going around Europe as a strongman before marrying a European woman, coming to the United States and eventually settling in Paterson. He opened a restaurant and then started selling his frankfurters,” Zimmer says.

As with some words in the English language, pinpointing the origin of a phrase is difficult, but Zimmer says he has faith in “Hot Dog Morris. He was the innovator in calling it a hot dog and marketing it that way.”

★~ Vanilla Ice Cream Day:

“Just Vanilla” ice cream is pretty special –  Out of all the hundreds of flavors of ice cream available to consumers today, vanilla still ranks by far the number one choice, coming in at 29 percent. (Second place is held by chocolate at 8.9 percent.) It is such a versatile flavor of ice cream that to quote El Morno friend Carol it can go anywhere but to church on Sunday!

★~ Today in History:

♥ ~ 1715 – The first lighthouse in America was authorized for construction at Little Brewster Island, Massachusetts.

♥~ 1827 – The first swimming school in the U.S. opened in Boston, MA. Actually, the first lesson proved interesting: A student was suspended from a pole on a rope while “learning the use of his limbs.” Famous people who were former students: John Quincy Adams, James Audubon.

♥~ 1903 – In Detroit, Henry Ford sold his first production car, the Model A. The car featured a twin-cylinder internal combustion engine.

♥~ 1966 – Frank Sinatra hit the top of the pop album chart with his Strangers in the Night. It was the first #1 Sinatra LP since 1960. The album’s title song had made it to number one on the pop singles chart on July 2nd.

♥ ~ 1969 – Three Dog Night received a gold record for the single, One. It was the first of seven million-sellers for the pop-rock group.

♥ ~ 1982 – Diet Coke was introduced.

♥ ~ 1995 – Two American amateur astronomers first reported the discovery of the comet bearing their names: Hale-Bopp. The comet enters the inner solar system every 3,000 years or so.

★~Born Today:

♥~ 1888 – Raymond Chandler:  Detective author: The Big Sleep, The Long Goodbye, Farewell, My Lovely, The Lady in the Lake, The High Window. It’s less commonly known that his first writing was not detective fiction, but poetry

♥~ 1946 – Andy Mackay musician: saxophone, woodwinds: group:Roxy Music: Virginia Plain, Pyjamarama, Do the Strand, Editions of You, In Every Dream a Heartache, Street Life, A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall, All I Want is You, Out of the Blue, Dance Away, Angel Eyes, Jealous Guy; solo: LPs: In Search of Eddie Riff, Resolving Contradictions

♥~ 1947 – David Essex (Cook) singer: Rock On, Lamplight, I’m Gonna Make You a Star; actor: Godspell, Evita, That’ll be the Day

♥~ 1950 – Belinda Montgomery actress: Miami Vice, Man from Atlantis, Doogie Howser, M.D., Stone Fox, Tell Me That You Love Me

♥~ 1951 – Edie McClurg actress: WKRP in Cincinnati, The Hogan Family, Planes, Trains and Automobiles, A River Runs Through It, Eating Raoul

♥~ 1961 – Woody Harrelson Emmy Award-winning actor: Cheers [1988-89]; White Men Can’t Jump, Natural Born Killers, Indecent Proposal, The Cowboy Way

♥~ 1965 – Slash (Saul Hudson) musician: guitar: group: Guns N’ Roses: Welcome to the Jungle, November Rain, Sweet Child o’ Mine, Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door, Nightrain

♥~ 1967 – Philip Seymour Hoffman Academy Award-winning actor: Capote; The Talented Mr. Ripley, Scent of a Woman, The Getaway, Twister, Boogie Nights, The Big Lebowski, Patch Adams, Magnolia, State and Main, Almost Famous

♥~ 1968 – Stephanie Seymour super model

♥~ 1989 – Daniel Radcliffe actor: Harry Potter film series, The Tailor of Panama, David Copperfield; Broadway: Equus, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying [2011]

★~ Hotdog Gallimaufry (can you really know too much about hot dogs? Odd thinks not) 

The hot dog is the quintessential summer food: cheap, tasty, great for grills and forgiving of even the most inexperienced backyard cooks. But who made the first hot dog? Historians believe that its origins can be traced all the way back to era of the notorious Roman emperor Nero, whose cook, Gaius, may have linked the first sausages. In Roman times, it was customary to starve pigs for one week before the slaughter. Gaius was watching over his kitchen when he realized that one pig had been brought out fully roasted, but somehow not cleaned. He stuck a knife into the belly to see if the roast was edible, and out popped the intestines: empty because of the starvation diet, and puffed from the heat. According to legend, Gaius exclaimed, “I have discovered something of great importance!” He stuffed the intestines with ground game meats mixed with spices and wheat, and the sausage was created.

After that, the sausage traveled across Europe, making its way eventually to present-day Germany. The Germans took to the sausage as their own, creating scores of different versions to be enjoyed with beer and kraut. In fact, two German towns vie to be the original birthplace of the modern hot dog. Frankfurt claims the frankfurter was invented there over 500 years ago, in 1484: eight years before Columbus set sail for America. But the people of Vienna (Wien, in German) say they are the true originators of the “wienerwurst.” No matter which town might have originated this particular sausage, it’s generally agreed that German immigrants to New York were the first to sell wieners, from a pushcart, in the 1860s.

The man most responsible for popularizing the hot dog in the United States was, however, neither German nor Austrian. His name was Nathan Handwerker, a Jewish immigrant from Poland. In 1915 Handwerker worked at a hot dog stand at Coney Island, where he made a whopping $11 a week slicing buns. The hardworking Handwerker lived entirely on hot dogs and slept on the kitchen floor for a year until he’d saved $300, enough to start a competing stand. He was a savvy businessman: knowing his former boss charged 10 cents apiece for dogs, Handwerker charged only 5 cents. Customers flocked to him, his competitor went out of business, and Nathan’s Famous was born.

By the Depression, Nathan’s hot dogs were known throughout the United States. In fact, they were so beloved as delicious, all-American eats that they were even served to royalty. When President Franklin Roosevelt hosted King George VI of England and his queen at a picnic in Hyde Park in 1939, first lady Eleanor decided to make grilled hot dogs part of the menu, a choice that scrutinized by the press, leading up to the picnic.  Mrs. Roosevelt mentioned the hubbub in her syndicated newspaper column. “So many people are worried that the dignity of our county will be imperiled by inviting royalty to a picnic, particularly a hot dog picnic!” But the hot dogs proved to be a great hit: the king enjoyed them so much he asked for seconds.

The Original Nathan’s Famous is still open, located on the same Coney Island corner where Nathan Handwerker opened the shop in 1916. It’s been open 7 days a week, 365 days a year ever since–except when it was forced to close due to damage inflicted by Hurricane Sandy in 2012.

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The big day has arrived and we are ready!  We’re off to pick Cousin Carla up at the airport. And oddly enough I am very hungry for a hot dog! Maybe, we will indulge for lunch! The rest of the day we’re just going to hang out and visit. Tomorrow, we will hit the ground running or at least speed walking.

Relish your day!

Odd Loves Company,

Why did the hot dog turn red?

It saw the salad dressing!

TTFN!